THE KINSHIP OF LIFE. 



19 



derful because they have taken place before our very 

 eyes. To know the laws of heredity and to select domes- 

 tic animals and plants so to reach our ends in accord- 

 ance with these laws is indeed a creation. Artificial 



selection, says Youatt, is the " magician's 

 Artificial ^^^^ „ , ^hich the breeder can sum- 



selection. , • , r 1 -11 



mon up whatever animal form he will. 



One might, according to Somerville, chalk out on the 

 wall the form of sheep he most desired, and then de- 

 velop it by attention to selection of parentage. The 

 processes of heredity would bring this about by laws as 

 unvarying as that by which a stream is forced to turn a 

 mill. Professor Goodale tells us that were all our fruit 

 trees destroyed and the species exterminated, they could 

 all be won back again by the selective culture of wild 

 pomes and berries. 



" Natural selection " is, however, an affirmative 

 phrase for what is largely a negative 



f^"'!^ process. " Natural extinction," or the 



selection. 



destruction of the unfittest, would some- 

 times express the same idea better. 



No more striking statement of the universality of 

 the struggle for existence and of its power to compel some 

 form of selection — natural, of course — has ever been 

 made than that given by Darwin in the Origin of 

 Species. From this I quote : 



" I use this term, struggle for existence, in a large 



and metaphorical sense, including dependence of one 



being on another, and including (which 



e s rugg e or -^ more important) not only the life of 

 existence. 



the individual, but success in leaving 



progeny. Two canine animals, in a time of dearth, may 



be truly said to struggle with each other which shall get 



food and live. But a plant on the edge of a desert is 



said to struggle for life against the drouth, though more 



